Notebooks

Notebooks are snapshots from our writers, reflecting on current affairs and underappreciated aspects of culture and history.

Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, Saint Rémy, June 1889.

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Tender is the night

Across our cities and towns, night’s natural darkness is giving way to the glare and dazzle of LED lighting – but to embrace it wholeheartedly is to risk losing more than ominous s..

Clive Aslet March 2, 2021

Oasis lead singer Liam Gallagher (right)

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Champagne supernova

Audacious dynamism and uninhibited creativity defined the music scene in the party-hard 90s – the last decade when outsiders could become bona fide rock n’ roll stars.

Sylvia Patterson February 27, 2021

Marcel Desailly (left) of AC Milan and Jari Litmanen of Ajax

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Italia 1990s: footballing glory turned to dust

The beautiful game seemed made for the Italy of wild hair, baggy shorts and Euro-optimism. But did the glory days of Series A ever really exist?

Tobias Jones February 27, 2021

A burned-out building during the Seige of Sarajevo

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Yugoslavia and the ghosts of nationalism

The breakdown of Yugoslavia in the 1990s shattered optimism in liberal democracy and transnational cooperation. History did not end – it continued.

Tim Marshall February 26, 2021

Swedish pop group The Cardigans, circa 1997.

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Abba and engineering: how Swedish music took over the world

Pop became Sweden's biggest cultural export in the 1990s when the hit machine went into overdrive. The roots of it lie in the 1970s and the Swedish love of manufacturing.

Johan Hakelius February 24, 2021

Cast members of NBC's hit comedy series Friends. Credit: Warner Bros. Television

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We were on a break

It was the decade of Friends, Bill Clinton and a fresh new pan-European passport. Underneath the teen-pop smile of the nineties there were blemishes.

Fay Schopen February 23, 2021

Iraqi children in front of a mural of Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 1999. Credit: KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images.

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Learning from the big, bold 1990s debates over the post-Cold War world

In the digital age, intellectual debate is more polarising and vituperative than ever. To generate the new thinking needed to navigate our uncertain global landscape we should revi..

Francis J. Gavin February 22, 2021